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Researchers Find Gene for Baldness

By Reuters
Contributed by Jodie Miller

Washington, DC
January 27, 1998


Researchers said on Thursday they had found a gene that might govern baldness and said their finding could lead to a gene therapy treatment for people who want more hair.

The new gene, appropriately called hairless, could regulate the human hair cycle, they reported in the journal Science.

"The discovery of this new gene gives us endless possibilities that may allow us to effectively treat hair loss and possibly baldness within the next five years," dermatology professor Angela Christiano of New York's Columbia- Presbyterian Medical Center, who led the study, said.

"It is now within our reach to design ways to grow hair, remove hair, even dye hair genetically and, best yet, this can all be accomplished topically, reducing possible side-effects."

Christiano's team started with a family in Pakistan whose members all suffer from a rare genetic disease called alopecia universalia. Victims have no hair anywhere on their bodies.

"They have no hair on their lashes, no eyebrows, no hair inside their nose, nothing," Christiano said in a telephone interview. "It doesn't make you sick and kill you (but) it's devastating."

The condition was clearly genetic. "We got the linkage to chromosome 8," Christiano said, but then hit a roadblock because there was "a lot of junk" on the chromosome the researchers could not identify.

"We started looking around for some mouse models that might give us a clue." The obvious candidates were "hairless" mice bred for dermatological testing.

"These hairless mice have been used a long time in dermatology for testing sunscreen and moisturizers but they never been used as primary models for baldness."

But Christiano's team found the gene responsible for the mice's hair-free condition and found a gene sequence that was about 80 percent similar in the Pakistani family, right on chromosome 8 where they hoped it would be.

It also does what they hoped it would do. "'Hairless' is a transcription factor, meaning that its job is to turn on other genes," she said. "We hope it will give us a better handle on male pattern baldness."

The most common type of hair loss, known as male pattern baldness, can affect up to 80 percent of all people eventually and is hormone-related. Another type is caused by stress,

"With the hairless gene, the real basis of hair loss can begin to be understood," Christiano said. "We can now look at the cause -- the genes themselves -- with the understanding that hormones are important but not primary."

She said it may be possible to treat the more severe cases, such as the Pakistani family, with gene therapy -- perhaps even with a rub-on product. Gene therapy for male pattern baldness was also possible, she said -- but years away.

At present there are two different treatments for baldness -- Merck and Co.'s Propecia, a one-a-day pill based on hormones, and Pharmacia & Upjohn Inc.'s Rogaine (minoxidil), which is rubbed into the scalp and which stops hair loss in 80 percent of men who use it for a year. Another tests shows 80 percent grow some hair back after a year.

"It's a very important finding and it eventually could lead to new information about encoding the gene for hair loss," said Ron Trancik, Pharmacia's lead researcher for Rogaine.

He said the company had "discussed internally" the possibility of developing gene therapy for baldness.

The American Hair Loss Council in Chicago estimates that more than 33 million American men and more than 19 million women have hair loss.



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